


An Invasion of Beasts

by Wordplaysam



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-11
Packaged: 2019-04-21 17:51:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14290167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wordplaysam/pseuds/Wordplaysam
Summary: North of the wall, a group of skinchangers find a man of the Night's Watch.





	An Invasion of Beasts

The campfire’s embers were dying, I realized as I paced, so I tended it. It needed doing, and it took my mind off my unease for a little while. But when I finished and sat back to warm my hands by the flame, my worries all came flooding back. The Others were close. I could feel it, in the back of my mind, the way my shadowcat’s fur bristled.

Cass entered the cave with a bucket and a bit of cloth. We didn’t speak as she walked around the fire to where Marro and Rachal lay, bundled up tight in furs. Cass dripped water into Rachal’s mouth. Finally, it seemed, she could take it no longer.

“You’re brooding again, Jakob,” she said.

“Rachal and Marro have been gone too long,” I replied. “I’m worried that they’ve gotten into some kind of trouble.”

“Rachal does tend to do that,” she agreed, “but if they have any problems, they’ll just wake up.”

“I’ve known Rachal my whole life,” I said. It was true. My father and Rachal’s were brothers. She and Marro and I had grown up in the same village, before. “She’ll fight with her beast’s dying breath.”

“Then we’ll know when she wakes up screaming,” Cass replied.

“And if they never wake up?” A legitimate concern. A moon ago, Tobys had stayed too long in the skin of his bird. As his mind soared in the clouds, his body below had succumbed to thirst and cold. Now he lived a second life, a human mind permanently in an animal body.

She put down her bucket and came to sit beside me. “If it comes down to anyone taking blame, it’ll be me. It was my Dream.”

Cass’s Dream. A voice in the darkness, calling out for his brothers.

She picked up her bucket again and went to Marro. As the damp cloth touched his lips, his eyes fluttered open. “What is this vision of beauty I see?” he asked without missing a beat.

Cass looked at me, a smile flickering at the corners of her lips. “See?” she asked. “Brooding for nothing.”

He stood, shaking off the last vestiges of his beast. “Marro,” I said, and we embraced in the manner of men. “Glad to see you home. And Rachal?”

He motioned to the opening of the cave with his head. “Outside, with the prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” Cass asked. “Not refugee?”

“Crow,” Marro replied.

Marro’s tusked boar had already melted into the woods by the time we left the cave. But the crow, a hunchback it seemed, still stumbled toward us. It was a strange sight: the shivering man in black prodded forward by Rachal’s massive white bear. It looked almost like he were being driven toward us by a drift of snow. Tobys fluttered to a branch.

The crow fell to his knees before me. “Help me,” he said. The white bear lumbered away.

“Rise,” I told him. “We do not kneel here.” To give him credit, he stumbled to his feet. 

“Do you have any food?” he asked.

“Of course,” Cass replied, even though we were running low. I didn’t like the idea of sharing our goods with a prisoner, but my spearwife has always had a kind heart, and she does as she wills.

“Why are you so far from your flock, crow?” I asked.

“Garrouth Hill,” he said.

“That’s where you saw them last?” I asked, confused.

“No,” he replied. “My name is Garrouth Hill. Not crow. But since I joined my Brothers at the Wall I have been called Axe.”

“Axe,” Marro said. “A bold name.”

He shrugged, and shifted his cloak. What I had taken for a hunchback was actually a massive axe, its blade rippling blue, and sharp.

“A good blade,” Rachal said as she exited the cave, Cass behind her carrying food. “If you were strong enough to wield it, it might have given me a good fight."

Tobys shifted to a branch closer to Rachal. Before Tobys’ first life had ended, I had shared with Marro my suspicion that he was laying with Rachal. Marro had joked that he thought it was the other way around. The point was moot now, though, unless Rachal had an inclination to bond a female hawk. Which, to be honest, I wouldn’t put past her, if someday she gained the strength to bond more than one beast, as Cass had.

Cass offered Axe the food. He took a bite, suspicious at first, but once he decided we weren’t trying to poison him, he ate greedily. As he ate, I pulled Cass aside.

"I don't like this," I told her. "Why are we sheltering a crow, especially one so well-armed?"

"I Dreamed of him," Cass replied. "You know I don't Dream things that aren't important."

"But why?" I asked.

"I don't know yet." She looked to the crow, still eating his fill. At this rate I'd have to send Tobys out to hunt more meat. "But let's fill his belly, and let him thaw the chill from his bones at our fire. Perhaps it will become clear, in time."

I nodded. They looked to me for leadership, but I was no king here. We walked back to the fire and I squatted, my eyes level with Axe's. "I don't trust you," I told him. "But my spearwife does, and I trust her. Besides, my problems are bigger than a bunch of kneelers playing at Winter."

"We are not playing," Axe stated, clearly fortified by our food. "We are the Shield that guards the Realms of Men."

"Tell him of what lurks in these woods, Jakob," Cass said.

"Wargs, looks like," Axe said, glaring at Rachal. "Creatures of nightmares."

Rachal laughed bitterly. "You know nothing, crow."

“Marro and Rachal and I grew up in the same village near the Thenns,” I said. “One night the Others came. The next night, as we mourned, the dead rose and killed even more.”

“Wights are a story told to terrify young children,” Axe said. 

“I’ve seen it with my own eyes,” I replied. “My own brother…”

"They can wear the face of someone you love," Marro interrupted, "but they are demons." He knew as well as I did, for his mother stalked the ice on cold, dead feet.

“We barely escaped with our lives,” I said. “We found others like us, Cass and Tobys, and have been living out here ever since, fighting them. We are the last hope of our people, and if we fail, yours will be next."

He snorted. "Even if your story is true," Axe said, "you are but four--"

"Five," Rachal corrected.

"Five," he said, glancing, despite himself, at Tobys, "against an unholy army. How could you hope to hold them back, if you think the Night's Watch would fall?"

Tobys launched himself into the air with a hawk's cry, and Rachal leapt to her feet. "What is it?" I asked.

Cass' eyes grew unfocused for a minute, and then she was back. "They've crossed the creek bed," she said. 

I turned back to Axe. "I don't see your Night's Watch here," I said simply, opening my hands to gesture around our near-empty fire. "If you've recovered enough, you should run west."

"I took an oath, and I do not run from the Darkness," he replied.

"I wasn't taking you for a coward," I said, my perception already blurring that of my shadowcat. "To the west, you will hear the sounds of a battle. There you will find our beasts, and the Others. You'll see that what we say is true, and perhaps you will show us a good use for that blade."


End file.
